From the Many to the One: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 1 – Osho

You said we have seven bodies: an etheric body, a mental body and so on. Sometimes it is difficult to adjust the Indian language to the terms of Western psychology. We have no theory for this in the West, so how can we translate these different bodies into our language? The spiritual is no problem, but the etheric? The astral?

The words can be translated, but from sources where you haven’t looked for them. Jung was better than Freud as far as the search beyond superficial consciousness is concerned, but Jung too is just a beginning. You can get more of a glimpse of what is meant by these things from Steiner’s Anthroposophy or from Theosophical writings: Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled and other works, or the works of Annie Besant, Leadbeater, Colonel Alcott. You can get a glimpse from Rosicrucian doctrines. There is also a great Hermetic tradition in the West, as well as the secret writings of the Essenes, the Hermetic fraternity by whom Christ was initiated. And more recently, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky can be of help. So something can be found in fragments, and these fragments can be put together.

And what I have said I have said in your terminology. I have used only one word that is not part of Western terminology: the nirvanic. The other six terms – the physical, the etheric, the astral, the mental, the spiritual and the cosmic – are not Indian. They belong to the West as well. In the West the seventh has never been talked about, not because there were no persons who knew about it, but because the seventh is impossible to communicate.

If you find these terms difficult, then you can simply use “the first,” “the second,” “the third” and so on. Don’t use any terms to describe them; just describe them. The description will be enough; terminology is of no consequence.

These seven can be approached from so many directions. As far as dream is concerned, Freud’s, Jung’s and Adler’s terms can be used. What they know as the conscious is the first body. The unconscious is the second – not exactly the same, but near enough to it. What they call the collective unconscious is the third – again, not exactly the same but something approximate to it.

And if there are no common terms in usage, new terms can be coined. That is always better, in fact, because new terms have no old connotations. When a new term is used, because you have no previous association with it, it becomes more significant and is understood more deeply. So you can coin new words.

The etheric means that which is concerned with the sky and with space. The astral means the minutest, the sukshma, the last one, the atomic, beyond which matter ceases to exist. For the mental there are no difficulties. For the spiritual there are no difficulties. For the cosmic too there are no difficulties.

Then you come to the seventh, the nirvanic. Nirvanic means total cessation, the absolute void. Not even the seed exists now; everything has ceased. Linguistically the word means extinction of the flame. The flame has gone out; the light is turned off. Then you cannot ask where it has gone. It has just ceased to be.

Nirvana means the flame that has gone out. Now it is nowhere, or everywhere. It has no particular point of existence and no particular time or moment of existence. Now it is space itself, time itself. It is existence or non-existence; it makes no difference. Because it is everywhere, you can use either term. If it is somewhere it cannot be everywhere, and if it is everywhere it cannot be somewhere, so nowhere and everywhere mean the same thing. So for the seventh body you will have to use ‘nirvanic,’ because there is no better word for it.

Words in themselves have no meaning at all. Only experiences have meaning. Only if you have experienced something of these seven bodies will it be meaningful to you. To help you, there are different methods to be used on each plane.

Begin from the physical. Then every other step opens for you. The moment you work on the first body, you have glimpses of the second. So begin from the physical. Be aware of it moment to moment. And not only outwardly aware. You can become aware of your body from the inside also. I can become aware of my hand as I have seen it from the outside, but there is an inner feeling to it too. When I close my eyes the hand is not seen, but there is still an inner feeling of something being there. So do not be aware of your body as seen from the outside. This cannot lead you inward. The inner feeling is quite different.

When you feel the body from within, you will know for the first time what it is to be inside the body. When you see it only from the outside you cannot know its secrets. You know only the outer boundaries, how it looks to others. If I see my body from the outside, I see it as it looks to others, but I have not known it as it is for me. You can see my hand from the outside and I can see it. It is something objective. You can share the knowledge of it with me. But my hand, looked at in that way, is not known inwardly. It has become public property. You can know it as well as I.

Only the moment I see it from within does it become mine in a way that is unsharable. You cannot know it; you cannot know how I feel it from within. Only I can know it. The body that is known to us is not our body. It is the body that is objectively known to all, the body that a physician can know in a laboratory. It is not the body that is. Only private, personal knowing can lead you inward; public knowledge cannot. That is why physiology or psychology, which are observations from without, have not led to a knowledge of our inner bodies. It is only the physical body that they know about.

So many dilemmas have been created because of this. One may feel beautiful from within, but we can force him to believe that he is ugly. If we are collectively agreed upon it, he may also come to agree. But no one feels ugly within. The inner feeling is always of beauty.

This outer feeling is not really a feeling at all. It is just a fashion, a criterion imposed from without. A person who is beautiful in one society may be ugly in another; a person who is beautiful in one period of history may not be in another. But the innermost feeling is always of beauty, so if there were no outside criteria there would be no ugliness. We have a fixed image of beauty that everyone shares. That is why there is ugliness and beauty, otherwise not. If we all become blind, no one will be ugly. Everyone will be beautiful.

So the feeling of the body from within is the first step. In different situations the body will feel different from within. When you are in love, you have a particular inner feeling; when you experience hate, the inner feeling is different. If you ask Buddha he will say, “Love is beauty,” because in his inner feeling he knows that when he is loving he is beautiful. When there is hatred, anger, jealousy, something happens inwardly that makes you begin to feel ugly. So you will feel yourself to be different in different situations, in different moments, in different states of mind.

When you are feeling lazy, there is a difference from when you are feeling active. When you are sleepy, there is a difference. These differences must be distinctly known. Only then do you become acquainted with the inner life of your body. Then you know the inner history, the inner geography of yourself in childhood, in youth, in old age.

The moment one becomes aware of his body from within, the second body automatically comes into view. This second body will be known from the outside now. If you know the first body from the inside, then you will become aware of the second body from the outside.

From outside the first body, you can never know the second body, but from inside it you can see the outside of the second body. Every body has two dimensions: the outer and the inner. Just like a wall has two sides – one looking outward and the other looking inward – every body has a boundary, a wall. When you come to know the first body from the inside, you become aware of the second body from the outside.

You are now in between: inside the first body and outside the second. This second body, the etheric body, is like condensed smoke. You can pass through it without any hindrance, but it is not transparent; you cannot look into it from the outside. The first body is solid. The second body is just like the first as far as shape is concerned, but it is not solid.

When the first body dies, the second remains alive for thirteen days. It travels with you. Then, after thirteen days, it too is dead. It disperses, evaporates. If you come to know the second body while the first is still alive, you can be aware of this happening.

The second body can go out of your body. Sometimes in meditation this second body goes up or down, and you have a feeling that gravitation has no pull over you; you have left the earth. But when you open your eyes, you are on the ground, and you know that you were there all the time. This feeling that you have risen comes because of the second body, not the first. For the second body there is no gravitation, so the moment you know the second you feel a certain freedom that was unknown to the physical body. Now you can go outside of your body and come back.

This is the second step if you want to know the experiences of your second body. And the method is not difficult. Just wish to be outside your body and you’re outside it. The wish itself is the fulfillment. For the second body no effort has to be made because there is no gravitational pull. The difficulty for the first body is because of the gravitational force. If I want to come to your house, I will have to fight with the gravitational force. But if there is no gravitation, then the simple desire will be enough. The thing will happen.

The etheric body is the body that is put to work in hypnosis. The first body is not involved in hypnosis; it is the second body. That is why a person with perfect vision can go blind. If the hypnotist says that you have gone blind, you become blind just by believing it. It is the etheric body that has been influenced; the suggestion goes to the etheric body. If you are in a deep trance, your second body can be influenced. A person who is alright can be paralyzed just by suggesting to him that “you are paralyzed.” A hypnotist must not use any language that creates doubt. If he says, “It appears that you have gone blind,” it will not work. He must be absolutely certain about it. Only then will the suggestion work.

So in the second body just say: “I am outside the body.” Just wish to be outside it, and you will be outside it. Ordinary sleep belongs to the first body. It is the first body – exhausted by the day’s labor, work, tension – relaxing. In hypnosis, it is the second body that is put to sleep. If it is put to sleep, you can work with it.

When you get any disease, seventy-five percent of it comes from the second body and spreads to the first. The second body is so suggestible that first year medical students always catch the same disease that is being studied. They begin to have the symptoms. If headache is being discussed, unknowingly everyone goes inside and begins to ask, “Do I have a headache? Do I have these symptoms?” Because going inward affects the etheric body, the suggestion is caught and a headache is projected, created.

The pain of childbirth is not of the first body; it is of the second. So through hypnosis, childbirth can be made absolutely painless – just by suggestion. There are primitive societies in which women do not feel labor pains because the possibility has never entered their minds. But every type of civilization creates common suggestions that then become part and parcel of everybody’s expectations.

Under hypnosis there is no pain. Even surgery can be done under hypnosis without any pain because if the second body gets the suggestion that there will be no pain then there is no pain.

As far as I am concerned, every type of pain, and every type of pleasure too, comes from the second body and spreads to the first. So if the suggestion changes, the same thing that has been painful can become pleasurable, and vice versa.

Change the suggestion, change the etheric mind, and everything will be changed. Just wish totally and it will happen. Totality is the only difference between wish and will. When you have wished something totally, completely, with your whole mind, it becomes willpower.

If you wish totally to go outside of your physiological body, you can go outside it. Then there is a possibility of knowing the second body from within, otherwise not. When you go outside your physical body, you are no longer in between: inside the first and outside the second. Now you are inside the second. The first body is not.

Now you can become aware of your second body from the inside, just as you became aware of your first body from the inside. Be aware of its inner workings, its inner mechanism, the inner life. The first time you try it is difficult, but after that you will always be within two bodies: the first and the second. Your point of attention will now be in two realms, two dimensions.

The moment you are inside the second body you will be outside the third, the astral. As far as the astral is concerned, there is no need even of any will. Just the wish to be inside is enough. There is no question of totality now. If you want to go in, you can go in. The astral body is a vapor like the second body, but it is transparent. So the moment you are outside, you will be inside. You will not even know whether you are inside or outside because the boundary is transparent.

The astral body is the same size as the first two bodies. Up to the fifth body, the size is the same. The content will change, but the size will be the same up to the fifth. With the sixth body the size will be cosmic. And with the seventh, there will be no size at all not even the cosmic.

The fourth body is absolutely wall-less. From inside the third body, there is not even a transparent wall. It is just a boundary, wall-less, so there is no difficulty in entering and no need of any method. So one who has achieved the third can achieve the fourth very easily.

But to go beyond the fourth, there is as much difficulty as there was in going beyond the first, because now the mental ceases. The fifth is the spiritual body. Before it can be reached there is again a wall, but not in the same sense as there was a wall between the first body and the second. The wall is between different dimensions now. It is of a different plane.

The four lower bodies were all concerned with one plane. The division was horizontal. Now, it is vertical. So the wall between the fourth and the fifth is bigger than between any two of the lower bodies – because our ordinary way of looking is horizontal, not vertical. We look from side to side, not up and down. But the movement from the fourth body to the fifth is from a lower plane to a higher plane. The difference is not between outside and inside but between up and down. Not unless you begin to look upward can you move into the fifth.

The mind always looks downward. That is why yoga is against the mind. The mind flows downward just like water. Water has never been made the symbol of any spiritual system because its intrinsic nature is to flow downward. Fire has been the symbol of so many systems. Fire goes upward; it never goes downward. So in moving from the fourth body to the fifth body, fire is the symbol. One must look upward; one must stop seeing downward.

How to look upward? What is the way? You must have heard that in meditation the eyes must be looking upward to the ajna chakra. The eyes must be focused upward as if you are going to see inside your skull. Eyes are only symbolic. The real question is of vision. Our vision, our faculty for seeing, is associated with the eyes, so eyes become the means through which even inward vision happens. If you turn your eyes upward, then your vision too goes upward.

Raja yoga begins with the fourth body. Only hatha yoga begins with the first body; other yogas begin from somewhere else. Theosophy begins from the second body, and other systems begin from the third. As civilization goes on progressing to the fourth body, many persons will be able to begin from there. But only if they have worked through the three lower bodies in their past lives can the fourth be used. Those who study raja yoga from scriptures or from swamis and gurus without knowing whether or not they have worked through their three lower bodies are bound to be disillusioned because one cannot begin from the fourth. The three must be crossed first. Only then does the fourth come.

-Osho

From Psychology of the Esoteric, Discourse #7, Part 1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For related posts see:

Beyond the Gateless Gate: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 2

Also see: The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.